Introducing Semiosic Translation

Introducing Semiosic Translation

Border Crossings

For decades, Translation Studies has been perceived not merely as a discipline but rather as an interdiscipline, a trans-disciplinary field operating across a number of boundaries. This has implied and still implies a considerable amount of interaction with other disciplines. There is often much more awareness of and attention to translation and Translation Studies than many translation scholars are aware of. This volume crosses the boundaries to other disciplines and explicitly sets up dialogic formats: every chapter is co-authored both by a specialist from Translation Studies and a scholar from another discipline with a special interest in translation. Sixteen disciplinary dialogues about and around translation are the result, sometimes with expected partners, such as scholars from Computational Linguistics, History and Comparative Literature, but sometimes also with less expected interlocutors, such as scholars from Biosemiotics, Game Localization Research and Gender Studies. The volume not only challenges the boundaries of Translation Studies but also raises issues such as the institutional division of disciplines, the cross-fertilization of a given field, the trends and turns within an interdiscipline.

Semiotics and the Problem of Translation

Here is a radically interdisciplinary account of how Charles S. Peirce's theory of signs can be made to interact meaningfully with translation theory. In the separate chapters of this book on semiotranslation, the author shows that the various phenomena we commonly refer to as translation are different forms of genuine and degenerate semiosis. Also drawing on insights from Ludwig Wittgenstein and Walter Benjamin (and drawing analogies between their work and Peirce's) it is argued that through the kaleidoscopic, evolutionary process of unlimited translation, signs deploy their meaning-potentialities. This enables the author to throw novel light upon Roman Jakobson's three kinds of translation - intralingual, interlingual, and intersemiotic translation. Gorlée's pioneering study will entice translation specialists, semioticians, and (language) philosophers into expanding their views upon translation and, hopefully, into cooperative research projects.